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Commonweal

EIN 94-2366094 · Bolinas, CA

Public records show a registered, tax-exempt organization in good standing.

LegitimacyPassesRegistration and standingFinancial healthGood85 out of 100GovernanceStrong100 out of 100Impact evidenceDescribes programsHow well its results are evidenced

What it says it does

ENGAGE IN EDUCATIONAL, CHARITABLE AND RESEARCH ACTIVITIES WHICH CONTRIBUTE TO THE HEALTH OF INDIVIDUALS, TO PUBLIC HEALTH AND TO THE HEALTH OF THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT.

Income
$11.3 million
Spending
$10.7 million
Spent on programs
83%
Reserves
3 months of spending
Largest source of income
donations and private grants, 88%
Employees
138
Volunteers
159
Highest pay
$252,386, secretary & ed

Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate

Financial health

Good: 85 out of 100. Higher than 79% of charities in its peer group (human services, $10m to $100m).

  • Reserves

    20 of 35

    Spendable reserves would cover 3.0 months of spending.

  • Debt

    20 of 20

    It owes 8% of what it owns.

  • Living within its means

    15 of 15

    Income exceeded spending by 6% of income.

  • Income trend

    15 of 15

    Income rose 8% on the year before.

  • Spending floor

    15 of 15

    83% of spending went to programs and raising each dollar of donations cost 6 cents.

Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate

Governance

Strong: 100 out of 100. Higher than 35% of charities in its peer group (human services, $10m to $100m).

  • Independent board

    25 of 25

    8 of 10 voting board members are independent.

  • Conflict of interest policy

    15 of 15

    Has a written conflict of interest policy.

  • Whistleblower policy

    8 of 8

    Has a written whistleblower policy.

  • Record keeping policy

    7 of 7

    Has a written policy on keeping and destroying records.

  • Board minutes

    5 of 5

    Keeps minutes of board meetings.

  • Board sees the tax return

    10 of 10

    Gave the board a copy of this return before filing it.

  • Pay set independently

    5 of 5

    Sets its chief executive's pay through independent review and comparison.

  • Independent check of accounts

    15 of 15

    Its accounts were audited by an independent accountant.

  • No reported misuse

    10 of 10

    Reports no diversion of assets, excess benefits or loans to insiders.

Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate

Impact evidence

Describes programs. Its tax return describes what it does but we have found no measurable results in it.

Programs described in its return (21)
  1. $915,347 spent. RESILIENCE:Commonweals Resilience program is an umbrella that includes both The Resilience Project and Omega. The Resilience Project (TRP) builds on four decades of work at Commonweal on healing ourselves and healing the earth. TRP focuses on the polycrisismore than two dozen environmental and social stressors that have created a perfect storm of human and biosphere threats. TRP goals: Empower people, projects & practices to meet the Global Challenge; welcome diverse views across the global spectrum; encourage respectful dialogues across regions & cultures; inspire creative responses to the polycrisis. Stanley Wu serves as director. Omega incubates new initiatives for living in and through the global polycrisis. Omegas goal is to help build the nascent field of polycrisis research and action. This includes: (1) to map the best thinking on the polycrisis, (2) to identify the global network of those working toward creative solutions, (3) to identify the community of those who can work together to strengthen resilience, and (4) to identify and support specific projects with special value added. Omegas initiatives include: The Omega Collaborative, a steadily growing working group of partners around the world committed to a better future through a focus on systemic risk, interconnected and intersecting stressors, complexity, equity, governance, and the full range of issues threatening civilization; and The Omega Resilience Awards (ORA), which provides fellowships, research grants, and media creation to support new models of thinking, leadership, communication, and engagement in response to the challenges of the global polycrisis. Michael Lerner serves as director. (omega.ngo)
  2. $910,108 spent. Center for Healing and Liberation:Launched in 2021, the Center for Healing and Liberation is a home for transformative work. Within a community of belonging, the Center cultivates our individual and collective liberation through a range of initiatives, events, practices, actions and community networks. We are all related, and our futures are connected. To dismantle oppressive systems and transform culture, we need analysis and strategy, love and resilience, tools and skills, healing community, and a clear vision of a sustainable human story. The Center offers refuge, resources, and nourishment for change makers. The Centers initiatives serve those who are dedicated to taking action for racial, gender, environmental, and economic justice. The Center has a strong focus on supporting Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). This includes programs built around healing practices and explorations that offer clarity, discovery, release and deep rest. Sometimes it is helpful to cultivate healing within similar-identity cohorts while at the same time holding the collective. Victoria Santos serves as the director. (centerforhealingandliberation.com)
  3. $852,594 spent. CENTER FOR ETHICAL LAND TRANSITION:Center for Ethical Land Transition supports the land justice movement with education, training, and alternative land transitions rooted in BIPOC solidarity, land-centric orientation, and innovation.
  4. $797,299 spent. Somos El Poder:Somos El Poder (SEP) is dedicated to improving and growing fundraising at Latinx focused nonprofits in our nation. SEP works with any Latinx focused nonprofit regardless of size or budget providing support, professional development, best practices, training, and more. Armando Zumaya serves as director. (somoselpoder.org)
  5. $680,053 spent. HEALING CIRCLES:Founded in 2014, Healing Circles is an international learning community for people who want to do deep intentional healing work with cancer and other diseases or experiences of loss. Designed to extend the core work of the Cancer Help Program, it seeks to bring the deep experiences of healing to people who want to create a healing circle in their living room, church or any other setting. Healing Circles was founded in partnership with three other centersin Vancouver, B.C., Washington State, and Smith Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, D.C.that have done residential retreats based on the Cancer Help Program model for at least 20 years. We now have new centers in Langley on Whidbey Island, Washington, and in Houston, Texas. Our three Bay Area CCHP alumni groups are our laboratories for Healing Circles work in the Bay Area. Healing Circles are forming in North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Another Healing Circle just began in Jerusalem. Hundreds of people have experienced and studied Healing Circles work. Oren Slozberg serves as the director for Healing Circles.
  6. $650,374 spent. Humane Prison Hospice Project:Humane Prison Hospice Project (Humane) is developing a humanitarian, cost-effective and restorative justice solution to ensure that those aging and dying in prison receive compassionate care. The Humane team believes that the right to receive compassionate end-of-life care is a basic human rightone that should be extended to everyone, even some of the most wounded and troubled in our society. Humane strives for a world where all incarcerated people are treated with dignity and respect. Their model benefits not only the dying, but their fellow prisoners who provide the care, and the prison correctional staff as well, as they witness how transformative it can be for prisoners to learn to care for their dying brothers. The curriculum theyve developed trains prisoners as hospice volunteers in end-of-life care and grief support, and in other modes of crisis intervention that prepares them to support their peers who are suffering from depression, suicidal ideation, or the effects of trauma and violence often experienced behind bars. The outcome is a therapeutic community within prison walls that results in a cultural shift toward compassion, care, empathy and support that sets the foundation for restorative justice practices. The prison environment becomes a place for rehabilitation and support rather than punishment and conflict. Lisa Deal serves as director. (humaneprisonhospiceproject.org)
  7. $594,852 spent. YEA!:The Youth, Education & Arts (YEA!) Initiative at Commonweal brings together three long-standing, research-based arts education programsVisual Thinking Strategies (VTS), Partners for Youth Empowerment (PYE), and Collaborations: Teachers and Artists (CoTA)under one collaborative framework. Each program retains its distinct mission while benefiting from shared infrastructure, fundraising, and strategy. YEA! is led by a Senior Director who coordinates program growth, development, and financial sustainability through joint fundraising, business development, and cross-program collaboration. The initiatives purpose is to stabilize and strengthen these programs, increase earned and philanthropic revenue, and extend their collective impact in schools, museums, and community settings across the U.S. and internationally.
  8. $543,205 spent. Collaborative on Health and the Environment: Founded in 2002, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE) cultivates a learning community based on the latest, evidence-based science to share knowledge and resources, to improve individual and collective health. CHE is focused on how environmental risks can impact human health. By informing and connecting affected and interested groups, CHE hopes to build a groundswell of demand for prevention-focused behaviors and policies, as well as economic and legal structures that protect public health. CHEs primary activities include: sharing emerging scientific research on environmental determinants of health; fostering interdisciplinary and inclusive collaboration among diverse constituencies to translate and communicate the best available environmental health science; and facilitating efforts to reduce disease and disability and improve health across the lifespan. Kristin Schafer serves as the director of CHE.
  9. $464,528 spent. CancerChoices:CancerChoices is a platform that supports patients, caregivers and health professionals who seek balanced, science backed information on integrative cancer care to improve cancer outcomes. The mission of CancerChoices is to reduce suffering and support healing and resilience among people with cancer. CancerChoices is working to expand interest in and access to quality cancer care that integrates conventional care, self care, and complementary care. CancerChoices is contributing to raising the status and legitimacy of integrative cancer care among medical professionals and people affected by cancer. The CancerChoices website creates a healing space for people to come together to learn about hope, community, healing, and new priorities in life within the context of cancer. You can find out about the landscape of cancer care and the wide variety of options that can be integrated to promote healing. CancerChoices evaluates and summarizes evidence to help people assess their cancer care options to skillfully integrate self care and complementary care with conventional cancer care. Michael Lerner serves as the director. (cancerchoices.org)
  10. $421,087 spent. Commonweal Cancer Help Program:Founded in 1985, the Commonweal Cancer Help Program (CCHP) is perhaps the most respected residential support program for people with cancer and their significant others in the United States. Bill Moyers featured CCHP in his award-winning PBS series, Healing and the Mind. CCHP provides a weeklong program of yoga; meditation; relaxation; breathing practices; massage; morning support groups; sand-tray; exploration of sacred space; healing arts; music; an evening of healing words; primarily vegetarian whole foods cooking; individual sessions with co-leaders, nutritionists, and yoga practitioners; support groups; and explorations of choices in healing, conventional and complementary therapies, pain and suffering, and death and dying. CCHP regularly and reliably transforms the lives of participants in lasting and profound ways; it changes the experience of livingand sometimes dyingwith cancer. We currently offer six CCHP retreats each year. Since 2012, we also have been holding three-day Cancer Help Program trainings for Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS)- a community of young adults who have metastatic breast cancer. Arlene Allsman serves as the coordinator of CCHP.
  11. $309,200 spent. Center for Creative Community: Founded in 2014, the Center for Creative Community (C3) is an umbrella for a number of Commonweal projects that explore the intersection of dialogue, cognition, creativity, and community. Through work in different communities, C3 seeks to deepen our exploration of complex issues in our world. C3 programs include the Power of Hope Youth Camp, the Creative Facilitation Training Series, Commonweals Fall Gathering, Taproot, and Visual Thinking Strategies program. These programs are bringing new energy and diversity to Commonweal, strengthening the foundation for the next forty years of work. Oren Slozberg directs C3.
  12. $300,950 spent. Commonweal Retreat Center: The Commonweal Retreat Center is a breathtakingly beautiful space within the Commonweal site, where we hold the Cancer Help Program retreats and other Commonweal workshops. It also hosts personal and professional conferences, workshops, retreats, and gatherings that are compatible with Commonweal's nonprofit status. The Retreat Center includes Pacific House, a 12-bedroom retreat facility with a commercial kitchen, and Bothin and Kohler Houses, with two and three bedrooms respectively. Jenepher Stowell directs the Retreat Center.
  13. $282,100 spent. Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicine at Commonweal Garden:Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicinethe new program stewarding the Commonweal Gardenis dedicated to reconnecting people to the living systems that restore us to health and wholeness. Founded and directed by Anna OMalley, an Integrative Family and Community Medicine physician, Natura Institute is embodying a new model of care that does not deplete the precious resource that is the healer, that empowers the precious being that is seeking well-being, and that does no harm on an interpersonal, ecological, and planetary level. The Natura Institute seeks to reconnect people with healing, through deepening relationship with nature, healing plants (food and medicinal), and that which heals our human nature. The Natura Institute embodies an alternative model of proactive wellbeing-oriented medicine that is community-based and nature-placed, and serves the community at large as well as the medical community.
  14. $201,880 spent. Health Environment Action Research Team:The Health and Environment Action Research Team (HEART) is a collaborative that brings together environmental health scientists, analysts, and activists who lead environmental health projects at Commonweal. Steve Heilig (San Francisco Medical Society, CHE and TNS), Sharyle Patton (Biomonitoring Resource Center), Ted Schettler (Ecology of Health Initiative), Maria Valenti (Health and Environment Literacy Project), Kristin Schafer (CHE) and Michael Lerner, along with Oren Slozberg, ex officio, represent the team. We have monthly calls where we share strategies and explore collaboration. These are all deeply experienced scientists and advocates with remarkable networks. They demonstrate the quiet reach of Commonweals work in environmental health. HEART remains a low-key but useful gathering place.
  15. $195,367 spent. INNOVATIVE LEARNING AND LIVING INSTITUTE:Innovative Learning and Living Institute is an immersive residency that supports young adults, their communities, and the lands they inhabit to create regenerative relationships.
  16. $176,301 spent. Octavia Fund:The mission is to offer creative rest space for Black women activists to dream, cultivate their radical imagination, and plant the seeds of a more just world. We are building a community of Black women who are reclaiming rest as their birthright. Twice a year we offer retreat space for Black women activists to rest, dream, explore their creativity, and connect across movements, age, class, and identity. Retreat participation presently includes complimentary accommodations in beautiful natural settings, stipends for community care and transportation, optional programming rooted in embodiment and practicing our freedom.
  17. $164,850 spent. GO Compassion:GO Compassion uses art as a portal for introducing mediation as a healing practice for individuals and groups. The focus of the GO Compassion collaborations is on underserved,under-resourced segments of societyfoster youth and young adults from the foster system, individuals charged with criminal offenses, individuals who are returning to communities after a period of incarceration, and immigrant youth. Every collaboration gives access to learning about and practicing methods that increase self-awareness and the experience of self-healing from trauma. Angela Oh and Tu Ying Ming co-direct GO Compassion.
  18. $139,741 spent. The New School at Commonweal:Founded in 2007, The New School at Commonweal (TNS) is a community of inquiry exploring topics in health, the arts and sciences, the environment, and the inner life. TNS presents conversations, book readings, performances, and other events with thought and action leaders who are changing our world. Over 200 events are recorded and offered as podcasts on iTunes and our website. Most gatherings are offered free of charge as gifts to the Commonweal community, giving forward into a circle of generosity. In addition, TNS continues to refine an online presence, including maintaining the website and sending monthly newsletters that are eliciting good response and discussion. Michael Lerner serves as the director, and Kyra Epstein serves as the coordinator of TNS.
  19. $135,109 spent. Retreat Center Collaborative:The Retreat Center Collaborative endeavors to support the movement for spiritual transformation by focusing on the infrastructure needed to nurture individual and collective change, creating a network of retreat centers, and working together on strategies for financial sustainability. Oren Slozberg and Jenepher Stowell are on the Steering Committee with Fetzer Institute and other partners for this project. Ben Scott-Brandt serves as director. (retreatcentercollaboration.org)
  20. $112,773 spent. OTHER VARIOUS PROGRAMS:In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, Commonweal's other programs did a variety of work contributing to health of people and of the planet. Programs included Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center, Commonweal Juvenile Justice Program, Foundation for Embodied Medicine, Racial Healing Initiative, Syntropy Healing & Research, West Marin Climate Action, West Marin Review, Project Soul, SafetyNEST Science, Kids & Caregivers, Integrative Law Institute, Center for Dying & Lving, THE NEW SCHOOLS, GREEN INITIATIVES, and Regenerative Design Institute.
  21. RACIAL HEALING INITIATIVE:Racial Healing Initiative is a nationwide racial equity initiative grounded in retreat centers in the United States.

Source: Form 990 for the year ending June 30, 2025, filed with the Internal Revenue Service. Rating method 2026.2. How we rate

Legitimacy checks

  1. Is it registered with the IRS? Passed.

    Listed in the IRS master file of tax-exempt organizations as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.

    Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.

  2. Has the IRS revoked its tax-exempt status? Passed.

    Not on the IRS automatic revocation list.

    Source: Automatic revocation of exemption list, Internal Revenue Service, file dated November 6, 2026.

  3. Are donations tax-deductible? Passed.

    On the IRS list of organizations eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions.

    Source: Publication 78 data: organizations eligible for tax-deductible contributions, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.

  4. Is it keeping up with its IRS filings? Passed.

    Most recent return on file covers the year ending June 2025.

    Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.

  5. How long has it been tax-exempt? Passed.

    Recognized by the IRS since October 2002.

    Source: Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Internal Revenue Service, file dated October 13, 2026.

  6. Is it in good standing with state regulators? Passed.

    Not on California's list of charities barred from soliciting. Other states are not yet checked.

    Source: May Not Operate or Solicit for Charitable Purposes list, California Attorney General, Registry of Charities and Fundraisers, file dated November 4, 2026.

Ratings and checks are our reading of public records, using the published method. They are not a statement about anyone's honesty. If you work for this organization, you can send corrections or results, confirm you want gifts through Veridonate, or ask to be removed from giving.